


Neutrality is for Switzerland

by calrissian18



Series: Teen Wolf Coda [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Based on the Events of 3x16, Coda, Episode Related, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-28
Updated: 2014-01-28
Packaged: 2018-01-10 08:52:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1157633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calrissian18/pseuds/calrissian18
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles realizes what he's done and who he can tell.  Neither is the answer he expected.</p><p> </p><p>3.16 Coda - my first 3B episode coda.  Hooray!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Neutrality is for Switzerland

**Author's Note:**

> You are going to need to be _very_ up to date on _Teen Wolf_ to read this. This is coda for episode 3.16 - Illuminated and follows directly after the events of that episode. It incorporates the [scenes from next week](http://www.rickey.org/teen-wolf-3x17-sneak-peek-video-preview-season-3-episode-17-silverfinger/) (with the shadow men looking for a 'dark spirit'), as well as the [overall season 3B promos](http://www.mtv.com/shows/teen_wolf/teen-wolf-season-3-part-2-trailer/986628/video/) (with Stiles being dragged across the floor while using his cell phone's light).
> 
> So, basically, _spoilers_ , sweetie!!!! I don't even know what happened, you guys, this episode gave me _feels_. I'm totally suing.

Stiles skidded to a stop outside Derek’s.  It was morning, but early still.  The walls weren’t vibrating from the sound system though, so that didn’t bode well for Stiles being able to slip back in unnoticed.  He stopped and caught his breath before opening the door, hoping they would all be too distracted by whatever else to notice him panting on the other side of it.  He was kind of ace at going unnoticed; he’d been doing it successfully for over fifteen years.

When his breathing was level, he slid open Derek’s heavy metal door.  Derek, who was glaring from the other side of it.

There was a moment there where Stiles legitimately thought he might swallow his tongue.  His eyes bugged a little and he ramped up his enthusiasm to cover for the sudden hammering of his heart – that was  _so_ not something he needed to be dealing with right now.  “Oh, hey, Derek’s here,” he said awkwardly, voice strangely hoarse.  He spread his arm out over the loft.  “I’m not surprised because… well, because.  You live here, don’t you?  It only makes sense that you’d be here.  In fact, we threw you a ‘welcome home’ blacklight party in honor of that.” Stiles glanced around at the DJ table, which had been flipped over entirely, and the complete lack of lingering guests.  He rubbed the back of his neck.  “You were late, apparently.”

Derek rolled his eyes.  “And I’m not surprised that you copied my key.”

He really did  _not_  sound surprised.  Stiles decided to jump on that, keep the dial turned to ‘exasperation’ rather than ‘fury.’  “How else would we have thrown your surprise party?” Stiles said pithily.  He hopped down the steps into Derek’s loft, all casual-cool.  “Think it through.”  His eyes found Scott’s and they looked a bit hunted.  Stiles swallowed.  “Looks like you guys had some fun?”

Scott smirked a little and his eyebrows perked up.  It was as though he knew this was a serious moment but he was still a little excited by whatever had happened.  “Shadow men,” he said, bouncing his brows.

Which was basically the same as saying ninjas and suddenly the excitement made perfect sense.  Stiles and Scott surreptitiously shared a gleeful expression before looking away from each other so they couldn’t fuel one another’s inappropriate joy.

Isaac jumped into the brief lull with a sharp: “Where were you?”  He was glaring at Stiles.  He didn’t look genuinely suspicious, more like he just wanted to make everyone else’s life as hard as his was.  Which got annoying  _so_  quickly.

Stiles opened his mouth but it was Scott who crooned with a big grin, “Last I saw, you were hitting it off with the pink-haired girl.”

Stiles didn’t look at Derek.  He didn’t.  He  _didn’t_.  “Caitlin, yeah, of the virgin sacrifice fame.   _Caitlin_ ,” he said pointedly.

Scott’s eyes widened.  “Oh.”

Stiles nodded and his gaze maybe strayed over to Derek, for a half second.  His expression was tight and unreadable but his eyes were trained on Stiles’ cheek, unflinching, like he could still make out the paint there.  But Stiles was sure he’d scrubbed that away, he’d even checked in the Jeep’s rearview as he drove to the school.  His eyes cut back over to Scott.  “Yeah,” he impressed.  “That  _was_  going well though.  But I thought I had a hunch on the key.”  He shrugged.  “It is  _not_  the key to my old bike chain.”

It wasn’t a lie.  He  _had_  had a hunch and it  _wasn’t_  the key to his old bike chain.  It should disturb him how easy it was becoming to omit the truth, not only with his father but also with a bunch of human lie detectors – one of whom happened to be Stiles’ best friend.

It didn’t.

Scott shook his head, his brow furrowing in confusion.  “That one had the Cookie Monster key cap on it,” he pointed out.

“ _Right_.”  Stiles drew out the word, elongating it in sudden and feigned comprehension.  He kind of couldn’t believe Scott remembered that.  It had been years and years ago now.  That had been elementary school when they’d ridden their bikes there together, and Scott still knew what the key looked like that Stiles had locked his up with.

Stiles was staring at him, still somewhat blown away, when Derek growled at the lot of them, “Get out.”

Stiles’ eyes flashed around at the only people left.  The twins were trying to gain an in with Scott, Lydia had firmly aligned herself with him, Kira was out of the question, Isaac had his head up Scott’s ass and Allison was right behind him.  That left Derek, and only Derek.  Stiles could keep it to himself or he could trust Derek with it.

Stiles was putting everything he had on the wolf in the leather jacket.

He waited until the rest of them had filed out to stop Derek with his hand on his chest and mouth the words, ‘Can I talk to you?’

Derek’s brow furrowed in a slight frown and he backed up a step.

Stiles waited another few minutes before he pitched his voice low and asked, “Can they hear us?”

Derek tilted his head to the side, listening.  He grabbed Stiles by the forearm and dragged him up the stairs of his loft and out the door until they found themselves on the roof.  He pushed the door closed and turned around, all business.  “What is it?” he asked gruffly.

And the expression on his face was pained, like he expected Stiles was going to tell him someone else was dead or that another one of his former girlfriends had turned out to be a serial killer.  Even if either of those things  _had_  happened, Stiles was not going to be the one who volunteered the information.

Stiles ran a hand through his hair, sticking it up.  He paced from one side of the roof to the other while Derek stood near the edge with crossed arms and watched him.  “I have to tell you something and I need your first plan not to be: kill it until it’s dead.”

Derek raised an eyebrow, which Stiles took for agreement.

He licked his lower lip, steps stuttering to a halt, and huffed.  “Has Scott told you anything about what’s been happening here?”

Derek looked unimpressed with the idea that Scott would share  _anything_  with him and grunted out a negative.

Stiles nodded to himself.  He’d suspected that, though honestly he’d been hoping not to have to go back that far.  He drew in a deep breath and said, “It started the night of the lunar eclipse, when Scott, Allison and I became surrogate sacrifices for our parents.”

Derek’s eyes widened, his posture straightening up a little, but he didn’t interrupt.

Great.  So this was  _all_  new to him.  This should be fun.

When Stiles got to the root cellar and his expert timing with the bat, Derek couldn’t contain himself any longer.  “Deaton let you  _kill_  yourselves?” he deadpanned and he looked like a man who was not to be trifled with.  He had dark circles under his eyes and thick scruff and he just didn’t seem to care, about hiding the animal inside or taking care of himself.  He was on a bad, no good destructive streak and Stiles was beginning to think they had something in common there.  Even if Derek had given up on his own well-being though, he still seemed to have something invested in the rest of theirs’.  “God, Stiles, I expect Scott to be impulsive but you—”

Stiles cut him off.  “She had my dad.”

If there was anyone who could understand family and the desperation to cling to it, it was Derek, so Stiles was sure that was all he  _needed_  to say.  After all, Derek allowed Peter to hang around and it wasn’t because he was such an amiable dude either.

Derek clenched his jaw but let himself be derailed.  “Fine,” he said tightly.  “Talk.”

Stiles did, fast-forwarding from that night to what followed it – the open door in their minds, the nightmares within nightmares, the sliding reality, the sleep paralysis, the inability to read, the panic attacks.

Derek snorted, saying harshly, “You almost sound surprised there were ramifications to  _dying_.”

Stiles let out an explosive breath through his nose.  “Would you just fucking  _listen_?” he snapped.

“I am listening,” Derek gritted out, crossing his arms more firmly.

Stiles sighed, dragging a hand through his hair tiredly.  “Derek.  I’m not telling Scott because I need someone who’s going to be on my side here.”  He flailed a little with his hands, throwing them down and out.  “You’re the only neutral party I’ve got and that only works because I need you to  _choose_  a side.  I need you to be on  _my_  side.”

Derek’s gaze slid away, staring down at the seal between the roof’s door and the ground.  “I am,” he said finally.  He pinned Stiles with a piercing look and added in a tone that brooked no argument, “So is Scott.”

Stiles shook his head, huffing out air.  “There’s a girl involved.”  He twirled his hand in a small circle.  “I’m never sure that’s a fight I’m going to win.”

Derek bounced both brows but didn’t disagree.

Stiles chewed the inside of his cheek, trying to think how to phrase this.  There wasn’t any good way.  “I think there’s something in me,” he said, “something that’s not… me.  This door, whatever it is, I think it let something through and I have no fucking clue what its agenda is here.”  He started up pacing again, faster this time.  “It feels… off, but not necessarily evil, you know.  It tried to warn me about the door, with sign language.”  Stiles flared out his fingers, reiterating, “I don’t know sign language, I’ve never known it, so how the fuck does my subconscious, right?  Because it’s  _not_  my subconscious, I’m thinking.   And maybe it wants the door closed so it can settle in my head and set up shop without any other contenders coming along and pushing it out or maybe it was actually trying to help me.”

“This isn’t what’s got your heart racing,” Derek observed, sounding a bit surprised that this  _wasn’t_  the main concern while his eyes followed every jerk of Stiles’ movements.

Stiles paused and stared at him.  He blinked.  “I mean it about not, uh, neutralizing the threat first, okay?  Because  _I_  am potentially the threat and I really want to remain un… neutralized.”

Derek rolled his eyes, clearly annoyed with him.  “I’m not going to kill you, Stiles,” he said, as though that was obvious.

Stiles was tempted to point out in vigorous fashion, ‘Lydia, kanima!’ but he didn’t, because he was growing.  Also, he didn’t want to antagonize Derek into killing him.  “Good,” he said with shaky relief, “that’s good, because.”  He breathed deeply.  “Because there was this mass murderer, William Barrow, who killed a bunch of kids because, and I quote: they had glowing eyes.”

Derek’s eyes widened.

Yeah.  That was the appropriate response there.  “I’ve never heard of him,” Stiles added quickly.  “Never, in my life, until he showed up at Beacon Hills Memorial and got out.”  He swallowed and sprinted through the words: “But I think I somehow told him to kill Kira.”

Derek’s brows joined his eyes in their show of surprise.  “The girl in this ‘there’s a girl involved’ scenario,” he guessed.  He gave Stiles a quick once over and asked, “Yours?”  Before Stiles could even open his mouth though, Derek’s eyes again went to Stiles’ cheek as though there was still some evidence left on him of the night’s activities.  Maybe for a wolf, there was.  “No,” he said guardedly, “that was ‘Caitlin,’ wasn’t it?”

Stiles ignored him otherwise, but confirmed, “Scott’s.”  He waved a hand, clarifying, “Potential girl.”  He steered them back to the topic at hand, unsure why Derek had even cared enough about any of that to derail them.  Stiles knew what he  _wanted_  it to mean, what he’d only just realized he’d wanted to mean  _to_  Derek, but that was pure fantasy on his part.  “Either way, I don’t think he’ll approve of me leaving messages for known killers to murder her.”

“Probably not,” Derek agreed blandly.  He fixed Stiles with an assessing stare.  “Why aren’t you convinced this… thing, whatever it is and  _if_  it exists,” which was secondhand wishful thinking.  Stiles appreciated it, “is evil if it’s telling you to kill people?”

Stiles pulled his phone out of his pocket, prefacing, “Okay, so all of this is not to be repeated and I’m just going to reiterate that again before I show you this.”  He pulled up the text message with the image attached that Scott had sent him the day before.  He opened it, orange fire dancing around Kira’s image, and handed it off to Derek.  “Scott forwarded it to me; it’s Kira.  And before this,” he pointed down at the screen emphatically, “she sucked up a huge charge of electricity, I mean, she just  _absorbed_  it.  I have no idea what can do something like that.”

Derek was staring at the picture, almost entranced.  “No,” he agreed, sounding far away as he tried to work out what the hell she  _was_.

Stiles snatched his phone back so Derek wouldn’t be distracted while Stiles paced and flung out his hands and generally involved his whole body in this low-level anxiety fest.  “But I’m losing time, Derek. First the nightmares I couldn’t wake up from and now a life I don’t remember living.”

Derek watched him for a long moment, back and forth, back and forth, until Stiles wore himself down some.  After the silence had stretched and become comfortable, Derek asked simply, “What do you want me to do?”

That actually gave Stiles pause.  Derek was already doing everything Stiles had wanted: being there.  He’d wanted someone he could tell this to and not feel like he was the worst person in the world for it.  Derek never made him feel like that, even when he sometimes had cause to.  Stiles scratched the side of his nose and said helplessly, “Be on my side.”  He shrugged.  “Be someone I can tell this to without worrying you’re planning to put me down when the moment’s convenient.”

Derek lowered his chin, staring down at the ground, and dipped his head once.  “Okay.”  And with anyone else, it would sound like a throwaway sentiment, but with Derek there was true promise behind it and the relief Stiles felt at hearing it was unexplainable.

Stiles collapsed, like a puppet whose strings had been abruptly cut, and sat on one of the outcroppings.  Derek stood, leaning back against the ledge for a long time, before he came and sat down next to him.  The noise at street-level was starting to get loud enough that even Stiles could hear it as the hour got later.

He turned to Derek and said, “The girl, Caitlin, she asked me something.”  Derek’s jaw tightened and Stiles scrubbed at his forehead.  He should not be talking about this, he shouldn’t even be  _thinking_  about this.  He’d been potentially playing puppet master to a mass murderer and he was having threat-level orange black-outs, and yet he couldn’t get it out of his head.  He supposed that was being a teenager, his hormones were doing at least half the thinking here, if not more.  He rubbed a hand over his mouth, squashing his lips to the side.  “This is so fucking stupid.”

“What?” Derek prodded gruffly.

Stiles let out a strangled laugh and said, “She asked me if I liked boys.”  He glanced to the side before looking away, out over the edge of the roof and towards the horizon.  “It was like word association, man, my mind went right to you.”  He hadn’t ever really considered it.  Sure, he knew Derek was hot but it was always, ‘look at how stupid-hot Derek is, no chick’s going to notice  _me_  while I’m standing next to this beefcake.’  It was never, ‘look at how stupid-hot Derek is, I want to put my mouth on his mouth.’  Until Caitlin and that innocent little comment that had anything but innocent ramifications.

Derek tensed all over next to him.  Stiles didn’t even need to be looking at him.  He  _felt_  it.

“You’re sixteen,” Derek said dumbly.

Stiles laughed, properly.  “Yeah,” he said, shrugging, “and I’ve already died once.”  He turned to look at Derek when it hit him.  That wasn’t a ‘no.’  That wasn’t even close to a ‘no.’  That was an: ‘I’ve thought about this before and here’s the reason I came up with for why it should  _remain_  just a thought.’

Stiles swallowed.  Derek had considered this.  Stiles was sure of it.  He didn’t even realize he was leaning in until Derek’s breath did an odd hitching thing and he started to say, “Stiles—”

“Derek.”  Isaac’s voice had boomed up the stairs to the roof and through the door so even Stiles could hear it.  He banged it open barely a second later, just after Stiles had managed to pull away.

Derek scowled and threw a tight smile over to him.  “Isaac,” he greeted a bit frostily.

Stiles stood up and wiped his palms down the thighs of his jeans.  He nodded to Isaac.  “I should go.”  He jerked his head in the direction of Isaac and the door.  “Let you catch up with this asshole, who has gotten impressively more asshole-ish in your absence.”  He clapped Derek on the shoulder with a grin.  “I think it’s an homage.”  He paused at the top of the stairs.  “And the scarves, have a conversation, strike that – have an intervention, about the scarves,” he said seriously, motioning to his own throat with a sweeping gesture before firmly closing the door behind him.

 

* * *

Stiles didn’t know what it was, the sudden seizing of his heart in his chest cavity but he barely even got out the word ‘bathroom’ before he was ducking out of Mrs. Martin’s class.  It was a panic attack that wasn’t, the same inability to breathe but the factors causing it completely outside his own head.  It was like a huge fist had snatched up his heart and his lungs and his ribs and was squeezing as hard as it could and crushing it all together.

He slid down against the bathroom wall, pounding on his own chest, trying to kickstart his insides back into working order.  His breaths were coming in as short wheezes and the sounds they made, pulling in and escaping out, were pained and terrifying.

He fumbled with his phone, thinking he should call someone; Scott, his dad.  Derek.  Derek, who these past two days had tried to convince Stiles he was sane and well.  When it vibrated in his hand and nearly shocked him into dropping it.

His vision was blurry but he managed to make out the words Derek had typed to him:

 _I think we’ll know soon_.

Stiles had no idea what that meant.  He scrolled up, trying to find the thread of it, while white spots danced in front of his eyes and his head grew fuzzier.  He couldn’t make it make sense and he managed an inquiring:

_??_

The response didn’t take long at all.

 _Shadow men after a ‘dark spirit.’_    _Kira seems jumpy_.

Ah, Derek meant they would know about Kira soon.  If it was her.  If whatever was passing along this information to Stiles from inside his own mind was friend or foe.  Stiles swiped his thumb across the screen, trying to clear out the fog that was all in his head.  It was getting harder to remember what he was doing, what was happening.  Shadow men.  Dark spirit.  Kira seems jumpy.

Kira.  Kira, Kira, Kira seems jumpy.  Stiles’ eyes widened, the fist around his organs squeezing tighter.

He typed out, fingers shaking over the keys and vision starting to tunnel:

_Derek, it’s me.  I’m the dark spirit, it’s me._

His phone buzzed twice in quick succession and the words were there and they weren’t.

_Where are you?_

_Stiles!_

A brushed metal face peered into his own, yellow-green eyes phosphorous in the darkness and then Stiles was being dragged across the floor while trying to keep the light on them but he was too far gone, his brain deprived of oxygen and feeling weak and stupid.  He couldn’t make his fingers work to tell Derek where he was, he couldn’t do anything but be pulled along.

* * *

When Stiles came to, there was an empty and broken mask at his feet and Derek was untying him.  There was real fear in his eyes and he wouldn’t meet Stiles’ questioning stare.  Stiles had done something, he’d stopped them.  He’d had the power to and, as if that wasn’t terrifying enough, something inside him didn’t have any qualms about using it.

As soon as his hands were free, Stiles twisted them around Derek’s wrists, pulled them up from where he was working on the rope around his ankles.

Derek looked at him, gaze careful.

Stiles bit into his lower lip, eyes shining with frustration and barely restrained horror.  He squeezed his fingers around Derek’s forearms.  “What are we going to do?” he asked helplessly.

Derek stared at him for a long moment.  He pulled his hands away from Stiles’ and went back to unwrapping the rope from his legs.  He kept his eyes down, hooded, and grunted, “I’m going to be on your side.”  He glanced up and said simply, “The rest of it doesn’t matter because that’s all I have to do, right?”

Stiles leaned back and let out a long exhalation through his nose.  “Yeah,” he said, rubbing at his sweat-slick brow.  He shifted forward, pressing his forehead to Derek’s collarbone, and murmured, “Yeah, that’s all you have to do.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hang out [here](http://wellhalesbells.tumblr.com/). Sometimes. Almost never. But it's sweeeet when I do.


End file.
